Lately I've been annoyed by the advertising practices and just plain usability of local news websites.
NewsOK now has random video advertising that pops up on articles. I was literally reading an article and the little grey bar that says advertisement pops down and starts playing a video ad for Reynolds Ford and pushing the content I was reading down the page. Then when I clicked on it to pause the video, it opened a new window for the advertisement while the ad was still playing on the other page. I understand print media is on the decline and online ads are a way to make up for lost subscription revenues, but its getting to the point that I would actually go out of my way to avoid the ad sponsors in protest. ( I know it's not the ad sponsors fault for how their advertisement is displayed but they know the ad placement they purchase. )
Fox25 refreshes their pages every 60 seconds or so. So if you're reading a lengthy article and it has taken longer than a minute, the page refreshes on you and brings you back to the top of the page. I'm not sure how their ads are tracked and displayed or if they compensate for ads displayed to the same IP or not but is that fair to the ad sponsors? For instance, Restaurant A advertises on the website for 20k impressions and impressions are tracked by views, so each view equals 1 impression. If an article takes me 3 refreshes to read and i've seen the ad 3 times, is that 1 impression or 3? Are advertisers being duped out of their advertising? Not to mention that their mobile site is basically broken and the video player doesn't work.
Then there are some local sites that are linking to 3rd party national advertisers that don't filter the authenticity of their advertisers and half of them link to questionable / spam / scam sites.
//// rant over ////
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